Reading the badges
What a partner badge actually tells you, and what it doesn’t
Every agency site has a row of badges near the footer. Klaviyo Elite. Shopify Plus. Google Premier Partner. They are doing a lot of work in a buyer’s head, and almost none of that work is warranted.
A partner tier measures one thing well: how much revenue the agency has moved onto that platform. It is a sales number wearing a competence badge. That is not nothing — an agency that has migrated forty stores has genuinely seen forty migrations — but it is not the thing you are trying to find out, which is whether they will be good at yours.
Of the 4392 agencies in this index, 176 hold a credential in two separate programs. That overlap is the signal. A single badge is a sales figure; two, from vendors who don’t talk to each other, is a track record.Agency Field Guide index, recomputed on every refresh
So use the badge for what it is — a floor, not a ranking — and then go looking for the things it cannot tell you. Who else in your category have they actually shipped for? Did the case study name the client, or did it say “a leading beauty brand”?
That is why every profile in this index separates what a third party confirms from what the agency says about itself, and prints the page each claim was read from. How that works, or go and read some profiles.